


The Most Beautiful Thing

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adorable moment, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Tiny Ficlet, post-Michael, trueform mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 19:53:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14984393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: Dean sleeps after Michael is defeated.Cas waits.





	The Most Beautiful Thing

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 30 minutes after mentioning a tumblr post to a friend on discord, which pointed out that Michael!Dean could see Castiel's true face. So I apologize that this hasn’t been edited or anything close. It demanded to be written, just because, but I had nowhere else to put it. I’m not a big ficlet writer, but here you go, internet.
> 
> Mal <3

 

 

It was a long time before Dean woke up, that first night after Michael. **  
**

Cas waited by his bedside, his silent vigil stretching on past the sunrise, past Sam’s gentle encouragement that he should rest, past the point where he could possibly leave. Cas would remain until Dean woke, and that was that.

He needed to know. He needed to see his best friend in those eyes when Dean looked at him. He couldn’t move until he knew.

Eventually, Sam left, trusting completely that Dean was entirely safe under the angel’s watchful blue gaze. The room felt bigger with him gone, emptier.

Cas had felt empty, since the day Dean said yes - gone but still there, his form right in front of them yet so far away. The emptiness had filled with guilt as the days dragged on, topped up with sorrow, soaked in shame. Everything he was meant to prevent, the single word he’d laid down his life over and over to stop Dean ever having to say.

He’d failed.

But now Dean slept, and Cas waited. His redemption lay behind those eyes, if Dean could only wake and show him.

Sixteen hours with barely a movement, not a murmur or a dream or a sigh. Just silence. The air of the room seemed to get heavier with every minute that ticked by on Dean’s clock, choking Cas with the fear that what lifted its head from that pillow would be–

Dean woke.

His brow wrinkled first, the tiniest motion, but instantly detectible to Cas’ intensely focused gaze.

His eyes crunched, squinting against the dim light of the lamp.

A sigh escaped his lips - no, not a sigh, a name. “Cas…”

Cas was right there, leaning forward, his hand reaching to Dean’s shoulder. He tried to keep the emotion from his voice, the panic, the fear. Another thing he failed at, to add to his list.

“I’m here, Dean. Open your eyes, Dean.”

Candy-apple green. Clear as day, as beautiful as the meadows in the Garden of Eden.

Cas’ sigh was ragged. “Dean…thank God.”

Dean’s hand rose slowly, hovering just in front of Cas’ face as he pushed himself up off the pillow, rolling slightly to his side, his gaze never leaving the angel.

“You….” Dean’s hand froze, fingers spread as if in confusion, just above the skin of Cas’ nose and left cheek.

The space between Cas’ eyes wrinkled with his tiny frown, but he didn’t say anything, giving Dean his needed moment.

“Your face,” came the almost sorrowful continuation of Dean’s words. “I saw your face, Cas. He could see it, Michael could. I could see you. See you without my eyes burning.”

Cas blinked, unsure. He didn’t know what to say, what to think, his mouth full of cotton and uncertainty.

“That was what kept me fighting, Cas,” Dean’s confession rolled easily from his sleepy tongue, careless now after all he’d been through. “That’s what kept me going while you got him out.”

“What?” Cas brought his hand up to cover Dean’s own as the fingers near his cheek finally connected, touching him in a way the angel had never dared hope for.

“It always scared me, what you really were, because I could never know…” Dean’s voice drifted, his eyes dancing around Cas’ face like he was studying some magnificent work of art. “…never know what you really looked like. You were incomprehensible, inhuman. I couldn’t see you.”

“What do you see now?” The words came out beyond Cas’ control, selfishly filling this moment that should have been about Dean, about his recovery, about his welcome home.

Dean sighed again, his hand as unflinching as gaze.

“The most beautiful thing in all of Heaven or Earth,” he smiled without any hint of shame, pulling Cas close.


End file.
